How most people look at the sound engineer when things are sounding bad and 90% of the time it’s the band’s fault or simply room acoustics that make it sound bad. But in the case of last night it was definitely the band that was at fault. For example; in sound check everything sounded good and everyone was happy with the sound on and off stage, but the keyboard levels were a lot louder than they were in sound check and they changed amps for their performance as well. To compound my problems the guitar amp they used was rubbish, it sounded completely flat, nothing there to boost to make the sound sharper and clearer. I can’t boost frequencies that weren’t being produced by the amp, all it was doing is picking up sounds from around the amp like drums and monitors. At the time I was rather pissed off because it was a complete waste of my time having a sound check if they are going to have different output levels and different equipment from the sound check. Set a damn level and leave it, then everything will sound good. The other bands on the night sounded good, with the exception of one moan from the main support, but that was a technical thing, the cable came out from the monitor, easily fixed. I guess what got to me was their fans saying things like “sack the sound engineer” – I know I shouldn’t let it get to me and normally I don’t, but it did last night and I very nearly closed down the system and went home because of their immature comments. I worked my ass off last night in a room that was all but empty which always makes things difficult. Anyway, it’s gone, onto the next gig on Friday which will be interesting, The Dharma Bums and The Dirty Fashions DI boxes galore and I have found out last night that 1st December I have Lemanis, 15 piece show + The Dharma Bums, but thankfully I will be getting help on that one, if it is going to be as busy as expected we’ll need two engineers, one for the stage area, one at the sound desk!
Plymouth Argyle managed to do something for at the fifth time of asking this season and that thing was win a home league tie over Crystal Place. It wasn’t very pretty and it wasn’t exactly the most convincing win ever, but it’s the first league win of the season at Home Park, so it’s all good. The margin of defeat was only one goal for the visitors and their keeper Julian Speroni did a fantastic job to deny Argyle a more convincing scoreline. David Norris and Luke Chadwick was denied by Speroni before Peter Halmosi struck a sweet low drive from the centre of the penalty area to give Plymouth a 1 – 0 lead in the 60th minute. Crystal Palace never really looked like threatening Luck McCormick’s goal at any stage of the game, which is just as well given Argyle’s habit of conceding sloppy goals. So it up two places to 9th in the league, Argyle need some consistency for the rest of season as the league is so incredibly tight and a win or loss can easily gain or lose half dozen places in the league.